These days we take everything for granted. If it doesn’t flash, make noises, do our work for us and update the world about our dinner last night then we’re not interested. But the most underrated and overlooked miracle of the last century and beyond is flight.
But let’s face it, it really can be all too easy to trivialise such a miracle of physics when you’re 7 miles high and some fat housewife going on a package holiday has elbowed you in the head for the 10th time in as many minutes.
Beyond the horrible check-in experience, the waiting, the boarding, the awkward bumping of limbs as you load your luggage into the overhead compartments, there is the most powerful and undeniably horrific saga of sleep. Or lack thereof.
On long-haul flights, or even cross-continental trips, sleep is the one thing that turns the average passenger into a snarling beast! After wrestling with your headphones to watch the craptacular film that’s being displayed on the half-inch screen a million miles away from you, you then have to find somewhere to put your feet.
If you had a modest ticket then you will soon become aware that leg space is something of a rarity. In unmoveable seats 10 inches away from each other it’s all too easy to boot the seat in front of you with the slightest movement. Hell hath no fury like a sleep-deprived passenger who’s been kicked in the back the 7th time by a fidgeting child.
There’s a saying “he could fall asleep on a washing line”. If that were true I’d also be able to sleep sitting up, but unfortunately nature has made pretty sure that’s never going to happen. Reclining is another issue. You’re either going to place someone’s drink tray firmly in their forehead, or crush their legs whilst you wriggle in your sleeplessness. There should be a term specifically targeted for mid-air “sleep guilt”. I’m sure there’s a ratio for angle-declined versus guilt gained.
The only time I’ve managed to ever get any quantifiable amount of sleep on a flight is when it’s on a huge 747, with 3 rows 3 seats, only me and one other passenger on the row with the middle seat as a “no man’s land” in which to rest limbs. That, combined with several blankets and pillows got me a few hours, but at the price of a neck like the letter ‘L’.
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